Fremont Villages in Their Cultural Landscapes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Sacred Southwestern Landscapes: Archaeologies of Religious Ecology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Physical and cultural landscapes are integral aspects of everyday life; however, traditionally Fremont archaeologists have focused on studying sites or even features as discrete units instead of attempting to understand them in the broader context of their natural and cultural landscapes. Many Native American groups imbue the landscapes that surround them with cultural and religious meaning which are often materialized in rock art, alignment with celestial phenomena or prominent geographic features, and/or repeated use of meaningful locations. Discerning these meanings is difficult, particularly without ethnographic continuity, but we examine Fremont cultural landscapes from the perspective of several Fremont villages. More specifically, we examine the alignment of buildings within Fremont villages, which are strongly patterned but vary from one village to another, as well as the rock art and other sites in their immediate vicinity. These demonstrate that, as for societies across the Greater Southwest, cardinal directions and landscape features were important to Fremont worldviews.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Sacred Southwestern Landscapes: Archaeologies of Religious Ecology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25802